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Malaysia
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

‘An intrusion’: data centre fights test Southeast Asia’s AI ambitions

From Malaysia to the Philippines, residents have begun resisting power-hungry AI projects planned next to their homes

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Residents and NGO activists hold placards as they gather to protest outside Petaling Jaya City Council office in Malaysia on July 27. Photo: EPA
Workers inspect cooling equipment at a data centre in Malaysia’s Johor state in May. Photo: Reuters
Pupils leave a school in Malaysia’s Johor state as a data centre stands in the background. Photo: Reuters
Vincent Tan
Residents of Section 9 in Kota Damansara thought they knew what was coming to the vacant land opposite their homes. The site, beside a community forest in the Malaysian township, was expected to become a high street retail development.

Instead, they learned that Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) had received an application for two three-storey data centre blocks – part of the vast physical infrastructure now being built across Southeast Asia to support cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

To governments, data centres promise foreign investment, digital jobs and a place in the fast-growing AI economy. To nearby residents, however, they can look very different: utility-hungry buildings raising questions over noise, water use, traffic and land suitability.

By July 21, the council had received about 290 objections, and nine days later it announced that the developer’s consultant had withdrawn the application to reassess the site’s feasibility and development components.

A man points to a location of the data centres near his home during a protest outside Petaling Jaya City Council office outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on July 27. Photo: EPA
A man points to a location of the data centres near his home during a protest outside Petaling Jaya City Council office outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on July 27. Photo: EPA
A similar scene played out this month in Oton, a municipality in the central Philippine province of Iloilo, where residents and farmers questioned a proposed 50-megawatt AI data centre during a public hearing.

The proponent walked out, and local media reported two days later that the proposal had been withdrawn.

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